Éire Óg Greystones
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Weekly Notes - 30th January 2008

Annual Dinner Dance

You are by now, no doubt, in possession of those items of hens’ teeth variety – the tickets for the Éire Óg Annual Dinner Dance which takes place this Friday March 1st in the Rugby Club. You are advised to store these extremely desirable tickets in a secure place lest that thief come in the night. With the market being so strongly a sellers’ one, replacements cannot be guaranteed.

Lotto

It is with some trepidation that the following information is being brought to your attention. For, as alluded to previously, a piseog has developed about mentioning, in these notes, the value of the jackpot and it being immediately won by some lucky punter. But then the lotto is the lifeblood of the club’s day to day existence, and in the interest of maximising sales one cannot be deterred by such primeval fears from disclosing that the jackpot now stands at the attractive figure of €7600. Why not subscribe by purchasing a ticket, by standing order or by cheque?

Intermediate Football

Ere yet the cobwebs of 2007 are dispersed than the Intermediates are kicking up the sod – they resumed training last week on Tuesday and Thursday. With the north (old) pitch out of action, activities took place on the south pitch. The going was good so the damage to its surface was minimal. But one worries what will be the effect under softer conditions.

There were rumblings at the quality of the after-shower cuppa which failed to cheer and definitely did not inebriate. There was even talk of calling in the GPA. The players were deterred from such drastic action with the news that Mick O’Neill, a Clareman with an established reputation in the area of infusion, would be taking up duty this week.

Junior Hurling

At the agm it was decided to enter a hurling team in County Junior competitions – a decision not made without a great deal of thought. At the meeting there was much barren dithering on the question of this being the most opportune of times for the undertaking of such a venture. In the end it was agreed to go ahead and let time be the judge for, if one fails to sail on the tide of opportunity in the affairs of man, one is destined to be “bound in shallows and miseries”. The initial steps in implementing this decision are being taken on Sunday with the first ever adult training session happening in the club grounds at 11.00am. Thereafter training will be on Wednesdays – during the season, hurling matches will be on Wednesday evenings.

Player's Grants

At the County Convention one was somewhat taken aback by the antipathy of many of the delegates to the government grant scheme for inter-county players. They feared that it would be to the irreversible detriment of the GAA. While one had more than a little sympathy for their point of view, one could also understand the attitude of the inter-county players. They look with envy at the lot of professional sportsmen who, at the end of 10 years, are given a golden handshake by the taxman as a result of a very questionable decision taken by Charlie McCreevy. Charlie, on a whim, decided that professional players should have a 10 year exemption from paying tax on their earnings from their game – presumably it does not apply to ancillary earnings. This means that a player earning an annual €200K over this period receives a cheque of circa €800K from the taxman after 10 years. There are many players earning considerably more than this and they can look forward to a present well in excess of a million from the Rialtas when they hang up their boots.

One wonders about the constitutionality of Charlie’s decision when one considers that one of the constitution’s basic tenets is that all within its ambit are to be treated equally. From where did he get the right to decide that a particular group within society was free of the duty to pay taxes? Then there is the question of the free market – is the concession queering the competitive pitch? The grant to GAA players is by way of conscience money from the government to offset criticism.